Ikea

The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalog. ~Fight Club

Ikea sends out these cute little catalogs with these cute little pieces of furniture in them. Unfortunately, its nearly impossible to get what you see in the catalog, into your home. And this is why I was an asshole to my wife. Please forgive me, sweetheart.

You see, when I tried to order what she wanted online, it returned, "This is not available as an online purchase." So I called the store. They told me, "We don't show everything for this combo in stock, but you're welcome to check the store itself and see if they have the inventory."
"Can't I just have you order it, and ship it to me?"
"Oh no, you have to go there."
"Huh." So jesskd26 watched the children and we drove to Frisco. Upon arrival we found a tech who tried to price everything out for us, (lots of waiting) but they were short the doors. So then we found someone else who was able to put together the order with different doors. (lots of waiting) But they had no drawers.

Should we order what we had now because we were going to have them shipped to the house, or should we wait to ship the complete order? When would they have the drawers in? "Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps a couple of weeks? Who knows? No, we can't call you, our system isn't set up in such a manner." (lots of waiting). Deciding that once they have the drawers in, they might be short of something else, we complete our order (lots of waiting). But once we completed our order, they weren't allowed to ship it to us. No, they gave us two sheets - one was items we had to go get ourselves throughout the store (lots of waiting), the other, was a list we used at checkout (lots of waiting). Once we checked out, they still wouldn't ship it - we had to wait at the furniture delivery desk (lots of waiting) where they wouldn't ship it either - simply ensure we received delivery of the items they had to get for us, in addition to the items we were required to get ourselves. Now that this was complete, we were instructed to take all the items to shipping, where we had to wait for them to be 'pulled' (lots of waiting). Finally, after we paid for home delivery, I explained that when I talked to customer support, it was suggested that I ensure the correct number of items were pulled from inventory prior to signing off on it (lots of waiting). So...they were one short, which he explained would be pulled after hours, as they didn't have access to the floor during business hours.

All that waiting and all I did was confirm that were indeed, one short.

Surely there has to be a better way to get what you see in the catalog, to your home.

Surely.